Prof. Evgueni Jak

Professor in Pyrometallurgy, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland, Australia

Dr Evgueni Jak is Professor in Pyrometallurgy at the School of Chemical Engineering. He is co-founder and currently Director of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre (https://pyrosearch.chemeng.uq.edu.au/). The Centre currently has major research programs on copper and lead thermochemistry supported by major metallurgical companies including Aurubis, Atlantic Copper, Anglo-Americal Pt, BHP (Olympic Dam), Boliden, Glencore (Kazzinc, PASAR, GT), Outotec, Penoles, RHI-Magnesita, Rio Tinto (Kennecott Smelter) as well as a number of other direct R&D support projects. 

He graduated with Master of Engineering (metallurgy) from St Petersburg Polytechnique University, Russia in 1984, then worked in industry for a large-scale steel casting company progressing from shift engineer to an executive management position. In 1995 he completed a PhD in Pyrometallurgy at The University of Queensland, then worked at the Centre for Research in Computational Thermodynamics (CRCT), Ecole Polytechnic de Montreal, Canada – developers of the computer thermodynamic package FactSage. Dr Jak returned in 1996 to take up research and subsequently academic positions at The University of Queensland. 

He is an author of over 450 scientific papers and a recipient of many awards. He has presented a number of invited, keynote and plenary lectures at leading international conferences. He has also been the organiser of major international conferences. 

Research interests include 

• Pyrometallurgy and high temperature processing
• Experimental phase equilibria (including development of an original method to measure high-temperature phase equilibria)
• Thermodynamic modelling of slag and other high temperature systems (including co-development of the current key FactSage public oxide thermodynamic database for the Al2O3-CaO-FeO-Fe2O3-SiO2-PbO-ZnO) system
• Experimental and modelling of viscosities of slags (including development of the original experimental methodology and development of multicomponent slag viscosity models)
• Freeze linings and slag-refractory interactions
• Modelling of industrial pyrometallurgical processes